The European Union has been, in the immortal words of Private Hudson from Aliens, “… on an express elevator to hell, going down,” for a long time now.
From the day of then ECB President Mario Draghi’s “We will do whatever it takes” speech in July 2012 to today, the EU has chosen a path of fiscal, foreign and monetary policy insanity that has lead it directly to where it is today, the sick man at the geopolitical table.
The most recent missive from the great Alistair Crooke over at Strategic Culture Foundation has some very choice words for Europe as well as his always trenchant analysis.
“Two events have combined to make a major inflection point for Europe: The first was America’s abandonment of the Great Game ploy of attempting to keep the two Central Asian great land powers – Russia and China – divided and at odds with each other. This was the inexorable consequence to the US’ defeat in Afghanistan – and the loss of its last strategic foothold in Asia…
Crooke lays out the fundamentals which led to the formation of AUKUS and the recent application of a more rapid depreciation curve for NATO.
Underscoring the divisions within the U.S. policy establishment which left Europe, especially France, twisting in the wind with the shift in priorities, Crooke quotes George Friedman of Stratfor, who argued recently on Polish television that NATO serves no real current purpose for a U.S. that finally acknowledges China, not Russia, as its biggest threat.
Since Friedman and Stratfor are as deep state as they come, you should always read Friedman’s publicly available ‘analysis’ as an operations manual for U.S. foreign policy. It’s the real official policy said out loud.
The key to understanding the splits within the western global order represented by the new AUKUS Alliance between the U.S., Australia and the U.K. is the following:
… the EU, Friedman has made ruthlessly clear, is not viewed by the US security élite as a serious global player – or really as much more than one ‘punter’, amongst others, buying at the US weapons supermarket. The submarine contract with Australia however, was a centerpiece to Paris’s strategy for European ‘strategic autonomy’. Macron believed France and the EU had established a position of lasting influence in the heart of the Indo-Pacific. Better still, it had out-maneuvered Britain, and broken into the Anglophone world of the Five Eyes to become a privileged defense partner of Australia. Biden dissed that. And Commission President [Ursula] von der Leyen told CNN that there could not be “business as usual” after the EU was blindsided by AUKUS.
Honestly, though, I really have to question whether they were actually “blindsided by this?” If people like von der Leyen and Macron are this angry over AUKUS then it’s clear that they, like Pelosi and Schumer here in the U.S., have not one clue as to what the plans actually are.
They are just mostly uninformed midwit lieutenants.
Crooke’s points, however, are well taken that the U.S. built the EU with the idea of it being the soft-power projector to complement the U.S.’s real (military and financial) power projector. I’ve been saying for years now that the EU’s technocratic miasma of suck was designed to “California-ize” the world the same way that state has ruined the U.S. from within.
But that only works if the U.S. also agrees to all of the EU’s moronic Climate Change policy.
So, Davos installed O’Biden to get things back on track when Trump and Brexit put their plans on the rocks by pulling out of the Paris Accords, the TTIP, the TPP and all the rest of his very important moves like shaking down NATO for money and questioning its purpose.
Clinton was supposed to perfect this Atlanticist, two-pronged Great Truncheon of Held to subjugate the lesser beings and she lost. The U.S. had the military power backed up by the EU strangling the world economy with useless ESG regulatory minutia gumming up the works worldwide.
The EU’s part was really the most important because with it, the combination of the post-WWII monetary and transnational institutions, the Fed calling the shots for the world’s economy, and the ECB destroying internal opposition to the EU itself, all of those regulations are borne much more easily by established countries/businesses than emerging ones.
These costs drain capital when it is most needed, during the rapid expansion and growth periods. They are massive barriers to entry into new markets, anti-competitive to the core and designed to roll market share up across all important sectors into the waiting arms of the people writing the campaign and lobbyist checks.
Moreover, it also ensures that all capital raises are bloated to contain these costs as well, creating bureaucracies and whole divisions (HR anyone?) which sap the country/company of its dynamism and leave it vulnerable to internal strife and attack while enriching the bookrunners for these ridiculous deals spinning the hamster wheel that much faster.
Now, however, Davos is scrambling to maintain the EU’s position through the O’Biden Administration while inertial forces within the U.S. and UK are breaking off from them.
This is why I’m more convinced than ever that Wall St. and The Fed are no longer on board with the Davos Great Reset.
Before I go there I need to address Crooke’s other ‘event’ that forced this change by O’Biden.
The second ‘leg’ to this global inflection point – also triggered around the Afghan pivot into the Russo-Chines axis – was the SCO summit last month. A memorandum of understanding was approved that would tie together China’s Belt and Road Initiative to the Eurasian Economic Community, within the overall structure of the SCO, whilst adding a deeper military dimension to the expanded SCO structure.
In short, Asia is being stitched together by institutions almost equally governed by Russia and China. Russia with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and CSTO and China with the SCO and BRI – Belt and Road Initiative. This integration now can take place with the U.S. pullback from Afghanistan and soon from both Syria and Iraq, regardless of whatever Biden may have mumbled before having his afternoon Jell-O and getting his Depends changed.
All that has happened here is the U.S. has finally admitted there are limits to its resources because the threats to it are too expensive to keep up with. Two can play the cost attrition game it seems.
The deep state actors sympathetic with but not necessarily aligned with Davos had to choose — Russia or China. They have chosen China and (this is the key point), Davos has shifted its strategies in line with this change. They are finally improvising.
This is why Biden was sent to Geneva to sue for peace over Ukraine in June. It’s also why the O’Biden administration begged Moscow to accept an audience with the High Priest of Neoconservatism, Victoria Nuland.
To truly shore up Europe’s Eastern front requires an particular messenger.
Who better than Nuland to finally admit publicly that the Minsk Agreements are the only way forward to solve the status of the Donbass to convey to the Russians that, finally, the U.S. may actually be serious about ending our insane policy in Eastern Europe.
And with it, admit publicly that NATO was no longer all that important.
Davos wanted this outcome because it ensures that war with Russia is off the table now that Ukraine will be settled by relatively peaceful means with less overt foreign intervention. It also conserves precious resources, while building anti-American sentiment in Europe, and clarifies who works for whom.
And this fits in with the overall plans to reorient the U.S. into a war footing with China, who themselves, are already on a war footing with us.
Now, with that said, let’s back up and ask the important question left hanging by Crooke’s essay?
Why was Europe was purposefully demilitarized over these past few decades?
What started as a U.S. protectorate after WWII has now been all but abandoned. NATO’s position in Europe is a joke vis a vis Russia. In fact, relations with NATO are so bad Russia just recalled its ambassador to NATO, a further signal that it is no longer as important as it was just a few weeks ago.
Think back to the incidents of the past few years in Syria and all of the redlines that were nearly tripped that could have created an Article 5 invocation and open War with Russia. I absolutely maintain that France and Israel attempted to do this by shooting down the Russian IL-20 ELINT plane in September 2018.
France and Israel could see the writing on the wall then, Trump was depreciating NATO. The foreign policy realignment was in place then.

Macron can talk all he wants about an EU army, but he’ll only get that after hyperinflation forces debt default, UBI, conscription and a digital euro. Without those conditions he won’t have a population desperate enough to become part of that… and even then, it will only be used to suppress dissent within the EU, as a kind of supranational police force. For a preview of that watch some video of who is trying to put down the strikes happening across Italy.
But, back to my question, why is this happening now? There had to be a strategic purpose to this, especially considering Britain’s legendary and inconsolable animosity towards Russia, which should have sustained this policy.
Money and resources. As always, big projects are always more expensive than you budget for. I’ve built enough outbuildings, goat sheds, fences and garden beds to know that the Bill of Materials in my head never matches the credit card statements at the end of the month.
The West is broke, they know it and there isn’t enough money to support a two-front war anymore against both Russia and China…while simultaneously subjugating central Asia to make the world safe for Zionists in Israel.
In fact, if that policy was meant as a long-term project to sap the U.S. of its dynamism and future, then job well done!
(Just in case anyone is confused my speculation above is the subtlest form of sarcasm, of course that was the freaking plan.).
So, with the collapse of the COVID-9/11 narrative back in May, when Fauci was first exposed as a liar by Rand Paul, the strategy had to shift… to focus on a war with China.
This is when Davos began improvising, for it was pretty obvious they believed they could continue this maximum pressure campaign through U.S. and British belligerence indefinitely while COVID kept everyone fearful and thinking it would hand them unlimited spending to build the final phase of their more perfect technocracy.
Too bad for them COVID-9/11 didn’t work out that way.
In the grand scheme of things, this demilitarization of Europe was a policy set in place to ensure it wouldn’t be a target in the next ‘great war’ that’s coming between the U.S. and China. Think it through. The U.S. survived WWII because none of its industrial base was bombed. Two big oceans separated the U.S. from the World at War.
Now, we’re looking at a war between China and an overextended U.S. fighting a war in China’s back yard, the Pacific. What separates them from Europe? Asia, for one. Africa for another.

So, from the geographical context, the war that’s too come it only makes sense that Europe, if they keep their heads down, will be the place not attacked directly. During the war to come capital can flee both the U.S. and China and come to them, the safe harbor.
What Davos is clearly thinking here is that they can play the role the U.S. played after WWII, installing its system on the post-war industrial world, while using that same system to keep the emerging and frontier parts of the world on the debt hamster wheel.
And to get that done they destroy the middle class and old industrial base at home to ensure continental hegemony through total surveillance and a digital euro.
The problem however, is that the U.S., Russia and China are wise to this game and everyday take concrete steps to ensure that plan fails miserably, c.f. everything I wrote above.
Making Europe a laughingstock of a military power now means this is the best possible outcome given the shift we’ve seen this year.
Davos is realizing very quickly that its power base is shrinking and while they still hope to institute their glorious technocratic revolution from the top down through manipulating elections, installing puppet governments and openly lying about why their doing it (Climate Change), the reality is their costs are skyrocketing (c.f. commodity prices) and their minions in the U.S. are proving to be particularly inept.
I’m convinced this wasn’t the original plan. I’m sure Macron was told that NATO would be there forever while they built his EU Army through French weapons contractors and then all of it could be transferred to the U.N. after the next ‘Great War.’
And I’m sure there’s still some version of that on the table as a kind-of Plan R or whatever.
But COVID-9/11 didn’t work out as planned. The time table they worked under was too compressed. ADE is killing them. The virus is burning out too fast. The vaccines are dangerous to too many to countenance and, most importantly, they are unnecessary for an even broader slice of the population.
Opposition to their ridiculous leaders is rising.
We now have full-on Randian Strikes going on and gods bless my kin in Italy for standing up to the truly odious Mario Draghi. If the Green Pass fails there, the whole Davos project collapses.
Let me reiterate, these people are not worth fearing. They can’t harm you if you have nothing they can take from you.
I’ve been saying we live in the Third Act of Atlas Shrugged for years now…. but to see it happen warms the cockles of my cold, dead heart.
The narrative collapsed too quickly and it’s all slipping through their fingers.
This is why AUKUS had to happen. The time table for war with China had to accelerate. We’ve got troops stationed in Taiwan, FFS. The Chinese have to respond to this or they lose massive face. Yes, it’s only ‘two dozen’ according to the WSJ, but it’s not the number that matters but that that number is non-zero.

To sum up, I don’t think this course of events was inevitable.
The best way to think of it is as a flow chart, with a very fluid Gantt chart on the wall over at Spectre HQ.
And that should make the ‘why’ of Europe’s ‘demilitarization’ clear now. O’Biden and Davos shifted gears after COVID-9/11 failed and this was the fall back plan because it jibed so well with existing U.S. and UK deep state strategies that are decades old.
It’s not like this wasn’t an easy pivot, after all.
It was the plan in the first place, it’s just been modified to leave Europe at the mercy of Russia which was the price to pay when looking at the balance sheet of assets and realizing someone else needs to pay the bills.
It also means that my analysis of German politics is correct and that in order to save Europe and some fragment of the globalists’ dream, it means a split in the EU. I mean, how else does Russia sign off on this without getting the guarantee that hostilities from the West end?
Davos still have their sights set on a world without war through technocracy, ruthless policing and surveillance, and fake value(s) precluding societal level war. It’s monumentally stupid, but, then again, so is Communism.
Whie they aren’t to Ornette Coleman levels of improvising yet, they are damn close to it.
The problem is they didn’t tell any of the lieutenants what was coming. They just issued orders through O’Biden and left the continentals angry they weren’t consulted. Macron is genuinely furious as Crooke points out, because he thought they were all on the same team.
And that’s creating confusion as to what’s really going on.
They aren’t on the same team.
Macron is still Davos’ best chance to hold onto France so don’t expect any miracles from the corrupt French political system and he will do exactly as he’s told. So will the Germans until the German people force a change on their political system.
Don’t expect that until inflation truly ravages the middle class there. Knowing that they’re chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” in the former East Germany, tells you all you need to know about where theirs heads are.
This is the world as it lays out today. There are cracks forming all along the big Davosian plan for the future.
Their agents still command the microphone and the media still soldiers on as if anyone cares what they think. And while many people are still so very asleep, enough aren’t that very soon now, the costs to the enforcers of these idiotic mandates personally will be too great for Davos to pay off.
And that’s when the real chaos starts.
But now that the U.S. and UK have told the EU they are junior partners in the great game, it has almost zero options. The only way Davos can salvage a tactical win is to get rid of Jay Powell as FOMC Chair who is strangling the European capital markets. They took their shot, got a couple of scalps but the reality is that there is no good narrative left for continuing to terrorize people over COVID-9/11 and not raise rates and let the economy run.
So, that strategy is a non-starter. Why replace a guy who is the only one actually defending U.S. interests within the halls of power and who has the confidence of the guys who write the real checks in D.C., i.e. Wall St.
Europe doesn’t like it but it may be the best possible solution after this debacle. So, watch now as Europe collapses and Davos tries to create a war that no rational person wants, costing everyone far more than just the money in their wallets while the Private Hudsons look up and finally say, “No.”
Join my Patreon if you can see the cracks forming.
BTC: 3GSkAe8PhENyMWQb7orjtnJK9VX8mMf7Zf
BCH: qq9pvwq26d8fjfk0f6k5mmnn09vzkmeh3sffxd6ryt
DCR: DsV2x4kJ4gWCPSpHmS4czbLz2fJNqms78oE
LTC: MWWdCHbMmn1yuyMSZX55ENJnQo8DXCFg5k
DASH: XjWQKXJuxYzaNV6WMC4zhuQ43uBw8mN4Va
WAVES: 3PF58yzAghxPJad5rM44ZpH5fUZJug4kBSa
ETH: 0x1dd2e6cddb02e3839700b33e9dd45859344c9edc
DGB: SXygreEdaAWESbgW6mG15dgfH6qVUE5FSE
The last gasp of a generation ? Boomers, for some reason think they matter anymore. The next generation up doesn’t care about Communism and knows it doesn’t work, but I not quite sure what they believe in.
When your actual vaxx uptake is only 60% to 70%, it usually isn’t a winning strategy to tell the 30% to 40% who have held firm to this point that you are going to starve them by blocking access to grocery stores. Germany is about to go down that road in tow to France and Italy.
Thus far TPTB have only been met with largely peaceful protests, but have been meting out less-than peaceful dispersal methods. At some point, this will spiral out of control quite quickly, and one can only wonder what will be the modern day equivalent of a Bastille moment.
IMO war with Taiwan is a No-Go for China because it would wreck to global semi conductor supply chain, and the US would make sure that in case China looks like winning there are no semiconductor fabs left in Taiwan. Once destroyed, those facilities would not be rebuild in China’s sphere of influence. I doubt China will want to run that risk until it’s own lithography technology has matured.
Russia/Turkey have outmatched the EU because another big wave (or two) of muslim refugees will shake up the continent, and might very well result in populist parties winning national elections. No doubt China has been paying attention.
China has its own lithography, its not as sophisticated as the Dutch/German systems. China can do 30-40nm lithography, but not the sub 10nm that is now considered state of the art.
If Taiwan semiconductor gets destroyed, it will take 3-4 years to build new fab plants in say Arizona (wherever, I’m picking AZ because Taiwan semi and intel are talking about building new plants in AZ). That’s 3-4 years China can use to catch up.
Fab plants in the USA and elsewhere are older plants on par with China’s plants. They make support / control chips (not state of the art). And often those plants are older / less efficient than the Chinese plants.
China would likely capture at least some current Taiwan semi employees (and their families)… cooperation would not be optional. This may help China close the gap in less than three years it would take to build fab plants outside China’s sphere.
The push to locate plants outside China’s sphere is already happening (for example, the intel and Taiwan semi plants planned for Arizona). This shift is happening whether Taiwan falls or not. If Arizona doesn’t work, there are other US states, Israel and Singapore as immediate options, and other locations are possible under longer horizons. Time is not on China’s side, chip fabrication is already diversifying out of Taiwan.
The advantages (to China) of capturing Taiwan are time sensitive. The longer they wait, the more likely Taiwan can be taken, but the less value it would have to China. From Taiwan’s perspective, the longer they hold out, the better for them.
It’s almost like they put the world’s most crucial fab plants in Taiwan on purpose.
Great article!
There is no exit for Davos.
Internal power struggles = goat butter popcorn time! These people have no morals to keep them from eating each other, and it’s exactly because you can pinpoint those cracks I follow your blog. Again what did they promise those CEOs and leaders exactly? You think you’re not food to other predators and parasites? Who are your real friends? Had a rude lesson in this myself, when after 2 years of a special friendship I still got books more information from a libertarian blog based on public sources.
I still quote Pravin Lal to him every day: “As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constructing its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. “
The abbreviation cf. (short for the Latin: confer/conferatur, both meaning ‘compare’)
Whats their desperate next move?
I am starting to wonder if Journalism is the right medium for so much content. Perhaps a reworking of several Shakespeare plays might give you the breadth to cover so much Tom. Given that Schwab looks like the apotheosis of Bond villainry, then you might also have to create a whole new genre. Perhaps we could have a scene with Putin throwing European leaders to the mat also……..Johnson probably thinks an Ogoshi is what you exclaim when your nuclear submarine is impounded in the straits of Taiwan…
Yes, Tom has the ability to juggle many threads and synthesize them for the lay person. As to the Gantt chart, I think it would really be a multi-dimensional Decision Matrix where new nodes would be created based on outcomes. For example, has Putin agreed to Minsk? Is the AUSUK agreement solid going forward? How were the Aussies able to break the contracts with France surrepetitiously just days before the AUSUK announcement? What else was in play? How does the Paris Climate Agreement fit into the picture? It appears that the US has agreed to the EU goals based on the number of climate projects in the BBB funding. The Chinese are now denying the hypersonic flight was a missile but that it was a space exploration. So are they planning the next war to be driven by space capability? Does anyone really believe a split between China and Russia is imminent? Hopefully someone in the US is on top of this chess game.
Davos is doing it all for Moshiach and don’t oyu ever forget it.
Yep…But “their” rock is Not Our Rock.
Hi Tom,
As a fellow scientist I feel the same way that you do about Climate Change: “Those are data sets so dirty I wouldn’t feed them to my dogs.” It is an appalling corruption of science IMHO and I am dumfounded that it has become a centerpiece of US foreign policy.
Given that, I just can’t see where this is going or why? If the US decides China is the next opponent, it is going to need inexpensive energy. I can see the EU/Germany wanting to decarbonize, as they have no petroleum reserves, and that was one of the reasons they lost the last world war. But the United States involvement seems to make little sense? Yet, NASA & NOAA seem to be the primary drivers of the warming narrative.
I doubt you can answer this in a comment response, so if you have a previous article or podcast about it, please let me know.
Thanks
Follow the money. https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
Consider the French Submarine was outdated before it made it too the drawing board. That was a big reason the Aussies dumped the French sub. It was a monster when the trend is smaller for easier hiding in the deep. A submarine is useless if everyone knows where it is all the time. Wild guess, the USA already knew what new tech level the politicians had sold to China. And there is always other stuff we do not know.
I enjoyed the article and needed that review to understand the deconstruction of the Davos plan to make us all Serfs. Of course other groups have similar plans we must fend off too.
Someone mentioned Taiwan above. Yes but China CCP would have had to learn a lesson from killing Hong(King) Kong of the financial world or the goose that laid the golden egg. But I doubt they learned that lesson so we should start building a chip plant.
Thanks for your work Mr Luongo, and thanks to Zerohedge for tipping me off.
They really dont know what they are doing.
Ornette Coleman. Nice!
Some people need to self flagellate to feel that they are alive.
Some organizations like EU need to do the same.
Yes, that’s the old paradigm – if you are right that the Davosians are just “commie eurotrash”, this analysis is spot on.
But if I’m right that they are globalists, this is all proceeding from a false premise and Putin is merely destroying their patsies for them, and enabling them to prove both that some national leaders (the uncooperative ones) are villains, and his victims (the patsies they have installed) are imbeciles.
Which is how they get us to beg for their Great Reset once their manufactured crisis reaches its zenith.
National leadership bad. Global leadership good.
Ben Bartee has worked it out Tom – maybe you could have a look at his analysis and tell us where you disagree?
https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/covid-propaganda-roundup-the-planned-supply-line-demolition-its-the-feature-not-the-bug/
“The calculus goes like this:
Forced economic shutdowns will wreck national economies
Economic hardship will lead to (even more) political anger
Un-hip to the international crime syndicate headed by the WEF, UN, and WHO, citizens will blame their national/local-level leaders
Local/national governments will become unstable
The political ground will be fertilized for international-level intervention to “correct” the problem created by internationally-led economic lockdowns of the global supply chain
Political sovereignty of the various nation-states will be further undermined and the internationalized political regime – the so-called “New World Order” – will gain traction
Understand that none of this happened by accident!”
I don’t disagree with any of that “Plan” Ivor. You seem to refuse to understand anything I’ve written and just keep repeating what is now a straw man argument…. that I don’t get ‘the plan.’
I do get the plan… clearly, but you are being willfully obtuse because you are a truly egotistical ass who has been publicly called out for being such.
I get the plan my dude…. I just don’t think it will WORK!
Now. That is NOT an invitation to an argument as to WHY I think it won’t work. So, you can stop writing and goading me into that conversation here in the comments.
That argument is made in the public writings for you to disagree with>>> Truly, you are the worst kind of commenter.
I’m your shadow. You project your fear onto me because I shame your inability to see people for anything other than weak and corrupt.
Have fun. And please, with sugar on top, piss off.
Get a grip Tom.
You’ve written thousands of panicky words about the impending failure of all the Davosian plans, and how they are increasingly desperate and feeble etc etc
And here we all sit in the rubble of the global economy, facing a Dark Winter ahead, with national leaders we couldn’t trust to tip water out of an old boot if the instructions were written on the sole.
Accepting you’ve lost a battle is not about fear but pragmatism. Putting aside the childish dream that Bitcoin will avert disaster. Realising that this is not the beginning of the end of their manufactured crisis, but the end of its beginning. And working out what must be done with THAT.
The fearful? They’re the ones whistling past the graveyard.
Perhaps Intel’s intel said it was wise to move production home…CA, the birth of Silicon Valley, has not allowed a new chip plant in decades…
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Intel-breaks-ground-on-20bn-Arizona-chip-plants-in-battle-with-TSMC
In Tom We Trust!
So, with the collapse of the COVID-9/11 narrative back in May
It doesn’t look like that in Australia and most of W Europe. The narrative is very much alive and shows no sign of faltering whatsoever.
Today the NIH admitted (in an official letter to Congress) that Fauci funded the creation of covid, laundering tax money through ecohealth.
When will government bureaucrats have to obey the law like the taxpayers they work for?
Thanks, Senator Paul.
Imagine if a private citizen had knowingly released a virus that killed roughly 600,000 Americans and 3 million people world wide.
The only debate would be life imprisonment or death penalty.
But when a government bureaucrat commits the crime, he gets a book deal and a pension?
To be honest, I get the impression that all NATO is doing is throwing a shape, pretending that there is some huge schism, in order to try and wrong-foot the Silk Road nations. In reality Aukus attacks the head whilst Fragment (France/Germany/Med countries/Northern territories) attacks the tail. Clearly Germany reckons the solution to heating Europe is to nuke Russia.
Just mad-ass schemes dreamed up in the West Point sodality no doubt, ably abetted by Boris Churchill.
It’s getting crazy. If Zemmour breaks club rules in France, it would be quite something.
It seems that what you are saying Tom, if I hear you right, is that the mad paroxysms of totalitarian diktat emanating from Brussels are poker bluff on a losing hand.